Category - mental health

Really great article here from Ed Stetzer. We are getting better at this in the church world but we still have a long way to go.

A Gap in Awareness. There was a significant gap in what pastors said their churches provided and what family members said was available. In six of the nine typical types of care referenced in the survey, fewer family members than pastors believed their churches offered such help.

This was particularly true for churches maintaining a list of experts to which people could be referred. Almost seven in 10 (68%) pastors said their churches had such a list. Less than three in 10 (28%) family members had the same perception.

The Views of Those with Mental Illness. Much like their family members, those personally suffering from mental illness and who also regularly attend church believe more could be done to help them.

Here are the ways a majority said the Church could assist them:

74%: help families find local resources for support and dealing with the illness

63%: talk about it openly so the topic is not so taboo

61%: improve people’s understanding of what mental illness is and what to expect

58%: provide training for the Church to understand mental illness

57%: increase awareness of how prevalent mental illness is today

For many suffering from a mental illness, they simply want to be treated as people and not outcasts. Overall, 70% of Protestants with a mental illness wanted fellow church members to merely get to know them as a friend. For consistent church attenders, that number climbed to 78%. They just want to be treated like a person, which sometimes even those in ministry can forget to do.

As a behavioral scientist who studies basic psychological needs, including the need for meaning, I am convinced that our nation’s suicide crisis is in part a crisis of meaninglessness. Fully addressing it will require an understanding of how recent changes in American society — changes in the direction of greater detachment and a weaker sense of belonging — are increasing the risk of existential despair.

All of which brings us to the changing social landscape of America. To bemoan the decline of neighborliness, the shrinking of the family and the diminishing role of religion may sound like the complaining of a crotchety old man. Yet from the standpoint of psychological science, these changes, regardless of what you otherwise think about them, pose serious threats to a life of meaning.

We are less and less connected with each other. This is such a big topic with so many different factors contributing to why people might take their life. I found this article has some good points. What are your thoughts?

So much information out there today how we have a really unbalanced relationship with our phones and social media. I am not saying we all need to get rid of these things but we all must reevaluate what we are doing.

If it sounds like a full-time job, that’s because it pretty much is — a gig they’ve aged into by virtue of becoming teenagers in the era of the smartphone. As the three friends laugh and chat with one another, their eyes are nearly always cast downward, glued to the devices held between their manicured fingers. The brands they are managing are their own. They post carefully curated updates and stylized pictures of themselves on various apps and platforms. They swipe left and right, opening and closing apps, gasping about the daily drama playing out on the glowing screen, and planning their next moves. They don’t consider it work — it’s more of a necessary pastime that’s become so routine, “it’s like breathing,” says Elina, who is 17. Often, they won’t even let sleep get in the way.

Such a great article

These teens are massively aware of their audience — and of exactly how tenuous their connection to their friends, on social media, can be. If you don’t comment when summoned, if you don’t click that heart when it’s expected of you, are you really being the best friend you can be? And if you’re not living up to the task, how can you expect your friends to be there for you the next time you take a chance and post something? It could mean getting publicly shut down or shut out. “FOMO, I think, for our generation, is a really big deal,” Yasmin says, using the acronym for “fear of missing out.” “Missing out for me, specifically, that’s just like the worst thing,” she says. “I’d rather sacrifice everything than not [be in the know]. . . . With family, they’re always there. With friends, it doesn’t feel that way.”

Love to hear ways you are controlling or managing your time on social media.